Three Women

By: Lisa Taddeo

Narrated by: Tara Lynne Barr, Marin Ireland, Mena Suvari, Lisa Taddeo

Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's Summary

Number one New York Times best seller

"THIS IS THE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR. This is it. This is the one.... It blew the top of my head off and I haven’t been able to stop thinking or talking about it since." (Elizabeth Gilbert)

"The most in-depth look at the female sex drive that’s been published in decades." (New York)

"A breathtaking and important book.... What a fine thing it is to be enthralled by another writer’s sentences. To be stunned by her intellect and heart." (Cheryl Strayed)

Desire as we’ve never seen it before: a riveting true story about the sex lives of three real American women, based on nearly a decade of reporting

It thrills us and torments us. It controls our thoughts, destroys our lives, and it’s all we live for. Yet, we almost never speak of it. And as a buried force in our lives, desire remains largely unexplored - until now. Over the past eight years, journalist Lisa Taddeo has driven across the country six times to embed herself with ordinary women from different regions and backgrounds. The result, Three Women, is the deepest nonfiction portrait of desire ever written and one of the most anticipated books of the year.

We begin in suburban Indiana with Lina, a homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. She passes her days cooking and cleaning for a man who refuses to kiss her on the mouth, protesting that "the sensation offends" him. To Lina’s horror, even her marriage counselor says her husband’s position is valid. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks. When she reconnects with an old flame through social media, she embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming.

In North Dakota we meet Maggie, a 17-year-old high school student who finds a confidant in her handsome, married English teacher. By Maggie’s account, supportive nightly texts and phone calls evolve into a clandestine physical relationship, with plans to skip school on her 18th birthday and make love all day; instead, he breaks up with her on the morning he turns 30. A few years later, Maggie has no degree, no career, and no dreams to live for. When she learns that this man has been named North Dakota’s Teacher of the Year, she steps forward with her story - and is met with disbelief by former schoolmates and the jury that hears her case. The trial will turn their quiet community upside down.

Finally, in an exclusive enclave of the Northeast, we meet Sloane - a gorgeous, successful, and refined restaurant owner - who is happily married to a man who likes to watch her have sex with other men and women. He picks out partners for her alone or for a threesome, and she ensures that everyone’s needs are satisfied. For years, Sloane has been asking herself where her husband’s desire ends and hers begins. One day, they invite a new man into their bed - but he brings a secret with him that will finally force Sloane to confront the uneven power dynamics that fuel their lifestyle.

Based on years of immersive reporting, and told with astonishing frankness and immediacy, Three Women is a groundbreaking portrait of erotic longing in today’s America, exposing the fragility, complexity, and inequality of female desire with unprecedented depth and emotional power. It is both a feat of journalism and a triumph of storytelling, brimming with nuance and empathy, that introduces us to three unforgettable women - and one remarkable writer - whose experiences remind us that we are not alone.

©2019 Lisa Taddeo (P)2019 Simon & Schuster

Moving, literary nonfiction

This book is a nonfiction account of the lives of — surprise! — three women. It is their accounts of their struggles to find romantic love (mostly heterosexual) and how that affects the trajectory of their lives, for better and worse. It is not a story of their struggles with career, school, family, etc. It’s an interior struggle that plays out with the key men (and a few women) in their lives.

While focusing on the particular, the book becomes universal. By the end, you are left with the impression that all of us have romantic triumphs and wounds that shape who we are. Even for this male reader.

The writing and narration are superb. Non-fiction is often just a “data dump” — here are facts. This reads like good literary fiction. The narrators convey the emotional subtext of the story very well. The level of writing and narration elevate this book out of the genre

One small complaint: the arbitrary switching among the stories of the three women. I think I would have preferred to hear one story, start to finish, before moving on to the next. When the next switch came, I was left hanging on to the previous story and needed to take time to reacquaint myself with the woman’s story I was rejoining.

I am impressed with the level of immersive reporting that went into this book. It’s obvious this author spent years on this project. Well worth the effort to produce something as well done as this.

35 people found this helpful

Not what it’s portrayed and not worth your time

This book is marketed as a nonfiction book that looks into lives, relationships, and desires of three women over a period of eight years.

Based on that description and raving reviews it sounds interesting right?

Well that might be the case if that’s what the book was but unfortunately it reads more like a fiction fantasy novel you find at your local drugstore. There is no in depth information unless your reading/listening to the sex scenes which the author feels the needs to go into extreme detail about. Whether this is to make the book “sexier” or what I’m not sure.

This is stories about 3 white women and their sex lives (from underage teach relations, a swinger couple, and a woman having an affair with an old boyfriend). It is boring - misleading and I couldn’t finish it.

9 people found this helpful

Packaged as one thing, but it’s really another

My main problem with this book is that it’s supposed to be a study about female desire, and very early on I realized that this was just the marketing angle, and instead it’s a compilation of three women, one of which already has a story covered by the media, and two additional random stories.

There are so many things wrong with this novel but I will start here. The author claims this study took her 8 years to complete. The pool was 3 white women (who I suppose represent all of us...)and the story is about how these women engage in controversial sex w a teacher, an old lover, or by swinging w their partner.

The author not only picked 3 white women, but she also makes a terrible reference to a Cuban lover one of the women had, and talked about how her friends teased her for being with a dirty greasy spic. Just really awfully framed from a crafts perspective.

The sex scenes are told in detail, the author works hard to make them sexy, but completely irrelevant to “a study of female desire.” Most of the book is about these sex scenes... feels more like a trashy romance novel than a study of female desire.

Lastly, the author demoralizes women as a whole gender by telling the story of her mothers death-bed advice “don’t let them see you happy, specially other women.” The author goes on to says she learned that lesson a long time ago.

Lisa Taddeo has single handedly regressed all the work women have done in the last 20 years to meet their sisters and help one another by writing this book. Women longing for sex and being sexual is something that is no longer a topic to raise awareness on. We burned our bras a long time ago. How is this news? This book should’ve have been written in 1945, I wonder if the author knows, or has the maturity to understand how far women have already come.

The fact that that she wrote this “sex sells” book and packaged it as a non fiction around women and female desire, is really a testament to how she views her readership. “They they will buy anything in the self help section, specially if there’s sex scenes too.”


Maybe Taddeo is right, maybe women should not trust other women, because she has sure left me feeling like I’ve been taken for a ride.

I will not only be returning this book, but outing this author.

Elizabeth Gilbert! How much did you get paid for the sponsor quote?

39 people found this helpful

Shocking and sensitive

Great book with fair handling of a difficult subject. The themes in the three wildly different stories are expertly drawn together. Difficult to read without feeling both the thrill and pain of the three protagonists.

23 people found this helpful

Interesting but lispy

I just couldn't do the author's lisp. Mena Suvari's narration was a relief. Stories were interesting. Provocative. The writing captured much of the complexity of human emotions. Although I would not reread or listen again, I would be interested in the author's future works.

10 people found this helpful

Good Book

Don’t listen to the haters, this is a pretty good book, although quite pessimistic. It’s non-fiction written in a literary style, which, at first, irritated me because I wanted the facts, but it’s very well written so you adapt to the prose.

The author presented three unique scenarios through three women Lina, Maggie and Sloane. Even though each woman’s tale is singular, these are universal struggles. If a woman reading this can’t identify herself somewhere in each of these women, she either hasn’t done much living or hasn’t done much personal excavation.

There’s a lot of raw sex in this book, but it’s not the kind that gets you hot, rather the kind that makes you think.

It’s always uncomfortable to listen to stories about people who are abusing themselves. Most women are by proxy - through their husbands, or children, or mothers, or bosses. That’s the conclusion I failed to see the end of this book, or the end of any of modern feminist literature. That the victim and the victimizer are the same person.

Still, the book is on trend (very metoo). And psychologically probing. It’s worth your time.

4 people found this helpful

a series of unresolved stories of regret

This book has a series of short stories about several different women's struggles with life, love, sexuality, relationship, but it fails to get to the point in a meaningful way and leaves you wondering is that all? What was the point??

9 people found this helpful

Ingenious

As an avid reader/listener of nonfiction, I've been moved and taught by many books (Evicted and No Visible Bruises come to mind). No book has affected me like Three Women. The cliché "brutally honest" is the best explanation I can muster. I cannot wait to listen again so I can delve deeper into the lives and the intricacies of the three women (all women, all people) Mrs. Taddeo examines. Stunning.

14 people found this helpful

Ooof. This. Was. Terrible.

I have so many problems with this book. I was really looking forward to after after reading a few early reviews. What those reviewers described was nothing close to what I read.

I was immediately set off from the prologue. The author reads this herself. With a pronounced lisp. - it might just be me, but listening to a lisp is like fingernails on a chalkboard.

The women. Maggie. Maggie sounds like a spoiled child. She had a crush on a teacher and was rebuffed so she decided to get back at him any way she could. He was acquitted of all charges. Her story wasn’t believable.

Lena. Her story was hard to listen to. She’s in a sexless marriage with boring, reliable Ed, who seems rather uninterested in his wife, so Lena looks up Aaron, an old high school - now married - boyfriend, on FB. They rekindle their physical relationship and this woman thinks it’s love because she finds a guy to French kiss her and after hearing it about a thousand times, we learn that french kissing is all she wants from poor old Ed. Aaron sounds like a dolt. Calls her kid, treats her like shit , has sex with her now and literally bolts as soon as they are done. There is nothing redeeming about Aaron, yet Lena thinks the sun rises and sets on his head. It’s hard to listen to just how desperate Lena is, pining for this painfully less than man, dropping anything and everything (kids included) if Aaron decides he’s got five minutes for a blow job.

Sloane. We’re supposed to believe she’s got everything. Looks, brains, a rich husband and career. Her husband fancies watching his wife have sex with other people and Sloane goes along for the ride. She initiates an encounter with an employee which turns into an ongoing affair which ultimately blows up in her face when the employees wife finds out. Yet somehow Sloane is still the victim. She’s ALWAYS the victim.
I didn’t care what happened to any of these entirely pathetic women.
This book isn’t “groundbreaking”. This isn’t a look into women’s desires. This book took EIGHT YEARS to write? Find a better way to utilize your time then, because this could have been written in quick weekend.
Three desperate, lonely women make bad choices and have sex to please men who don’t treat them with respect.
There. I’ve written this book.

Save your money. This was just awful.

114 people found this helpful

Narrative N-F but Disappointing

Format of rotating stories was hard to follow, would have preferred they be sequential. No real conclusion to them. Much less erotic than advertised. Dragged at times.

3 people found this helpful